Encounters and disencounters in becoming creative workers: motivations and experiences of postgraduate East Asian students in an elite UK university

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the motivations and experiences of international postgraduate students from East Asia in a creative industries-related (digital media) master’s program in the United Kingdom/UK. Grounded on the landscape of neoliberalisation and internationalisation of Higher Education/HE in Anglophone contexts, on the emergence of the creative industries (including in HE settings), and on notions of coloniality and locality, I examine the encounters and disencounters between international students’ expectations and professional aspirations, and their experiences in a digital media degree in a highly ranked UK university. From interviews with seven former students, two main findings emerged from this study: an interest in becoming creative media workers and an articulation of different values attributed to Western/UK HE. These findings highlight encounters and disencounters between participants’ expectations and the degree, and shed light on the diversity across an apparently homogenous student body and on how different geo-onto-epistemologies (i.e. the indissociable links between localities, realities, and knowledges) around creative industries and HE mediate these students’ expectations and experiences. Such findings can be relevant to the creative industries HE community, especially to those interested in the generative pedagogical and curricular potential of (dis)encounters in international and intercultural creative industries HE settings.